In today’s issue:

  • My 2021 prediction about inflation was right after all
  • The velocity of money drove prices higher
  • We won’t be leaving lockdowns again anytime soon

In July 2020 I explained to Fleet Street Letter subscribers why inflation would make a sudden and severe comeback. In June 2021 I explained precisely how it would do so: the velocity of money would bounce back to more normal levels after lockdown.

You can read about my original predictions and how I was able to make them here. In short, it was all about the identity MV=PY. Something taught in high school economics.

An identity is an equation that must hold true by definition… or something like that.

In this case, MV=PY identity means that the money supply multiplied by the velocity of money must equal economic activity times the price level. Those are explained here.

Back in 2020, we knew that the velocity of money (V) had tanked because of lockdowns. People couldn’t spend money. So the speed with which money was spent crashed too. The V in the equation fell.

By definition, either the price level (P) or the amount of economic activity (Y) had to fall too. That means deflation or a recession.

Central banks took action to prevent this. They pumped the economy full of vast amounts of money (M) to offset this crash in velocity (V). That kept the left-hand side of the equation stable. Which allowed prices and economic activity on the right-hand side to stabilise likewise.

My prediction in 2021 was simple: when the lockdowns end, the velocity of money (V) will make a shocking comeback to more normal levels. People will begin to spend their money again.

This was dangerous because central banks had added a huge amount of money supply. If all that money began to circulate faster and faster, it meant that the price level (P) would rise. We’d get inflation.

The proof I was right after all

Nobody ever talked about any of the above. Even once inflation broke out, I never found anyone who ever commented on the velocity of money or the MV=PY equation.

Until recently, I believed the media’s silence about the velocity of money was quite justified.

Yes, my forecast that inflation would surge had been accurate. But I was right for the wrong reasons. Prices had surged because of supply chain disruption due to the pandemic lockdowns.

It turns out I was right after all.

Velocity did jump back to more normal levels as the pandemic policies were lifted. The inflation had unfolded just as I’d predicted.

After all, it hit after the lockdowns ended and persisted long beyond plausible supply chain issues had abated.

You can see how velocity plunged during the pandemic and then rose back to normal in the US on this chart. The inflationary period coincides with rising velocity.

But velocity of money statistics is notoriously hard to come by.

Thanks to a Freedom of Information request, we also have the same information for the UK here. If you click on the “information” PDF, the first chart you’ll encounter (after a lot of zooming in) shows a crash and then uptick in the velocity of money.

And this, by the inviolable truth of the mathematical identity MV=PY did mean our inflation surged because of the velocity of money.

Who would’ve thought high school economics would be so useful?

What does this mean for inflation in the future?

Well, the velocity of money does not have the same impetus to spike as it did in 2021. After all, we won’t be exiting a lockdown anytime soon. Unless Ed Miliband gets away with something radical…

The absence of any lockdown-like shock means the velocity of money cannot surge from an artificially low base. The inflation, if it comes, would have to come from somewhere else.

But there are alternative ways inflation could emerge.

Central banks could create too much money. Perhaps in support of the climate agenda?

Or we could get stagflation as energy prices soar while trashing the economy.

That’s where it gets interesting for the velocity of money again. You see, nothing raises the velocity of money more than the prospect of inflation. Especially amongst a population that recently experienced such a wave of inflation.

What happens then has been well documented by economists. If people understand that money loses value, they avoid holding it. Which means spending it as fast as possible. And that speed is the very definition of the velocity of money.

If you think about it, a pound that circulates twice as fast around the economy feels like the central bank has printed another pound.

The point being that a small dose of inflation now risks triggering a spike in velocity. That’s a lot riskier than just a return to normal levels once lockdowns were lifted.

We risk a 1970s-style return of a second and much larger wave of inflation if it does return.

But what would provide the initial shock?

In our June monthly issue of The Fleet Street Letter, we pointed out that inflation can be a deliberate government policy to devalue debt.

Sure enough, central banks seem surprisingly willing to ignore recent upticks to inflation. Some are continuing to cut interest rates in the face of this uptick. If it persists, the risk of inflation surging rapidly higher very quickly is stark.

As of today, I remain on the fence about whether this will happen.

Although I suspect central banks and governments are quite desperate to achieve 4-5% inflation to deal with their dangerous debt loads, they failed to achieve it for almost two decades before the “overdose” as we called it 2021.

To sum up, if inflation rises a little, prepare for it to quickly surge out of control thereafter.

Regardless of how inflation emerges in the end, the reasons why it must still stand. Our debt-to-GDP ratio is dangerously high. And at these levels, governments always turn to inflation to pay off their debts.

That’s why it’s time to position yourself to protect your wealth.

Until next time,

Nick Hubble
Editor, Fortune & Freedom